Night Quest

But no Freebloods, and no humans.

As good as his word, Garret remained some distance behind. Yet he might as well have been clinging to her back; she could hear his rough breathing, the muffled tread of his boots, even the beat of his heart. And she could smell him, a pleasant scent that seemed to complement the aroma of freshly washed vegetation.

She could also smell his blood. As full darkness fell and he moved closer to take advantage of her night vision, she realized that the situation would not become any easier. One taste of his blood had been enough to make her crave it again. If she didn’t find a way to ignore him, the journey would soon become intolerable.

As intolerable as the memory of other cravings...and the way he had turned her own unwanted emotions against her by asking her about her former life. About children, and loss, and forgetting.

And love.

As she walked, she concentrated on rebuilding the crumbling barriers inside her mind. By dividing her consciousness between observing their surroundings and reconstructing her mental shields bit by bit, she could almost forget Garret for minutes at a time.

After several hours of unceasing rain, stillness fell over the woods. Artemis slowed her pace. She knew this area well; after her expulsion from Oceanus she had lingered here, well outside the borders of the Citadel’s territory, hoping that she might locate other exiled Freebloods and persuade them to accept her philosophy. She’d soon discovered that the outcasts had no interest in anything beyond survival.

She looked over her shoulder as she and Garret passed through a clearing where a cluster of ruined buildings stood, relics dating to sometime before the War. Garret was moving unsteadily, though his pace had never flagged. She came to a halt and waited for him to catch up.

“It’s after midnight,” she said as he drew level with her. “We should stop so that you can rest and eat.”

He met her gaze from underneath his hood. “I’m not tired,” he said.

“Nevertheless, you must have food. Wait here. I will hunt.”

Before he could protest, she slipped away into the darkness where he couldn’t follow. She brought down two rabbits in rapid succession and carried them back to the abandoned buildings.

Garret looked up, his eyes shadowed with exhaustion. “The goddess of the hunt returns,” he said.

There was a complex note to his statement, not mockery but something more lighthearted. Belatedly, she remembered what it was. Teasing. And there was real admiration behind his words.

Admiration that deeply unsettled her.

She laid the rabbits down on a broken chunk of concrete and crouched beside it. “If I were a goddess,” she said, “I could guarantee that a fire would be safe. As it is, I can only suggest that maintaining your strength is probably worth the risk.”

“My future strength is worth nothing if we attract a pack of Freebloods or militiamen,” he said. “Did you see or hear anything?”

“Freebloods have passed this way, but not in many nights.”

“Then I’ll risk the fire.”

He removed a lighter from his pack and began to gather kindling. She went to look for fallen branches, and by the time she returned he had a small fire going. With quick, efficient movements, he skinned and cleaned the rabbits and suspended them from a long sharpened branch over the fire.

“You’re welcome to share this with me, if you have an appetite for meat,” he said, the firelight dancing in his eyes and carving his face out of the shadows.

“There is little enough for you, and I am not hungry,” she said. “Eat, and I will patrol the area.”

“Thank you, Artemis.”

She ducked her head and pretended to examine her bow. While he finished cooking his meal, she paced out several wide circles around the ruins, listening as much as watching. By the time she returned, the fire was out, the remains of the rabbits had been buried and Garret was fast asleep.

He trusts me, she reminded herself with more than a little wonder. It was likely that he hadn’t intended to sleep, but his body had insisted, and his instincts...

His instincts told him that she would be there to wake him if any danger threatened them.

Squatting beside him, she studied his face. Now that he was asleep, she was even more aware that his usually calm demeanor was only a kind of mask. He mumbled something that sounded like a name. She couldn’t quite make it out, but his muscles were tense, and she could feel distress radiating from him along with his body heat. Grief beat against her new and fragile mental barriers.

“Garret,” she whispered. “It is only a dream.”

His eyelids fluttered. He expelled a short, harsh breath and then relaxed into normal sleep. The pressure inside her head disappeared, and she realized that learning to block him was no longer a matter of mitigating the uncomfortable turmoil his emotions created in her thoughts. It had become a necessity.

Still, a part of her longed to stroke the damp hair from his forehead, to tell him that all would be well and there was no need for bad dreams.

If she surrendered to such impulses, anything that happened afterward would be entirely her own fault.

An owl hooted somewhere above her and glided out of the trees. It dived into the tall brown grass, and something squealed. The strong taking the weak. The world fell into a deep hush, as if in mourning for the fallen. Another sound came faintly to Artemis’s ears. No animal had made it.

She entered the woods on the other side of the ruins and listened for a repeat of the cry. It came again, softer than before, a moan of someone in pain.

Unbearable pain, forcing its way into Artemis’s mind. She paused to brace herself and searched for the source.

She found the Freeblood lying half tangled in a mass of blackberry bushes, one arm caught in the brambles and his body twisted awkwardly. There was a gaping wound in his neck, too severe to heal on its own. The bite of another Opir.

Dark eyes rolled toward Artemis as she approached cautiously. He made a sound in his ruined throat. Most Opiri maintained the appearance of the age they’d been when they were converted, and this one appeared to have been turned in his late teens. Perhaps, she thought, after the end of the War.

“I will not hurt you,” she said, though she knew such an assurance would probably mean nothing to an exile. He jerked as she drew nearer, his hands clenching and unclenching.

She didn’t try to ask him what had happened. She could guess well enough. He might have been dying for hours, and his body’s attempts to heal would have driven him to starvation.

“Brother,” she said, dropping to her knees beside him. “Can you hear me?”

If he did, she thought, she had a feeling that things were going to get a lot more complicated.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_2b258113-3d9d-50d3-b9cd-6f451ec173df)

The boy’s mouth opened, but all that emerged was another groan.

“I know you suffer,” she said. “But I can ease your discomfort.” She laid her hand on his cool forehead and bent over him. She placed her mouth on his neck, releasing a little of the healing chemicals she had used on Garret. He tried to resist her, but he didn’t have the strength to fight for long. After a few moments he relaxed and closed his eyes.

Artemis withdrew and sliced her wrist with her smaller knife. While the blood of a pure Opir could not nourish another full Opir, it would temporarily ease his raging hunger. She offered her wrist and let him take what he could.

When he was finished, she pressed her palm to her wound until it began to close, and then touched his forehead again. It was slightly warmer, but she knew he had little time left.

“Listen,” she said, stroking the boy’s pale hair out of his face. “I am seeking a pack of Freebloods who might be carrying a human child with them. Have you seen such a pack?”

Confusion crossed the young Freeblood’s face. “Human?” he mumbled.

“A child, who never did any Opir harm.”

“Why...you care?” he whispered.

“Because I believe that it is not our true nature to kill each other over humans, or take life, even human life, simply because we can.”